‘Every day’ Greater Manchester hospitals are packed with 1,000 patients who are medically allowed to be discharged but cannot be, NHS bosses have revealed. Coupled with high numbers of people in hospital beds with Covid-19, hospital bed numbers are being perilously squeezed, they warn.
The figures come as NHS bosses admit that ‘all parts of the health and care system are under significant pressure’ as it heads into its most challenging period of the year - winter. Greater Manchester health chiefs say they are spending millions on trying to discharge people from hospital before a cold snap begins.
The Manchester Evening News has previously reported that, over the course of the last year, the region’s NHS has regularly experienced this level of patients well enough to go home, but unable to be discharged. As they wait to go home, NHS medics tell the M.E.N. patients are likely to deteriorate in other ways, making them more likely to have to come back into hospital in future and creating a revolving door of admissions.
